Wednesday, November 27, 2013

A bird forever caged does not know it can fly.

When I think of women’s rights, I think of freedom, I think
of independence, I think of liberalisation.
To understand what needs to be done, one must gauge the extent to which
the above mentioned criteria is fulfilled.

It was sometime back while babysitting a male and female
cousin (on separate occasions) of mine that I realised the problem is quite
deep rooted. While the male child is encouraged to pursue a career and gain the
skills required to excel in it, the female child is taught to dress pretty and
look her best in every occasion. She is not allowed to play in sun for fear of
tanning, in some communities she isn’t even allowed to gain a full education.
Marriage is brain fed to the female child from an early age as though that is
the ultimate goal, which is what she should strive for, to find and to keep a
‘man’ who will provide for her. I have always had an issue with this,
considering myself lucky to have studied in a co-ed school in the era of
non-Hindi soap operas on TV, I always knew women could do the same things men
could. Just switch on your television for one minute and watch the filth that
the lonely homemakers are subject to, probably the most impressionable and
influential people in the upbringing of a child. The fight for women’s rights
goes back a millennia every half an hour a television is watched. Somehow there
are no campaigns to ban these shows but complete furore over a sexually charged
advertisement. In my opinion, a camera focussing on a women’s breasts or
derriere is not the problem. A show, focussed on how a woman wants to find a
man who will not only look after her, but her parents as well, is a problem. It
reinforces the belief that she isn’t capable of doing it herself, her
dependence on a man is essential.

Take a look at all the religions around you, every single
one of them, they all breed a sense in people that women are in some way
inferior. This has not always been the case. Old Hinduism, for example used to
preach equality of gender, where women were required to work for a living. Why
did it change? Why is it that every religion from 500 B.C. became male centric?
They all cast gender based roles onto society. Religion is a great evil for
women world over. Every religion claims it’s scriptures to be the word of God.
Well, in that case God is a sexist, it’s time people said that openly.

The word that haunts most women all the time however is not
“Religion”, but “Culture”. “It’s against our culture”, I’m sure everyone has
heard that at some point in the last week. Convenient it must be that this
“culture” does not apply to men. Jeans is ok for a man, not for a woman, it is
against our culture. Shorts is ok for a man, not for a woman, it is against our
culture. Smoking is ok for a man, not for woman, it is against our culture (not
endorsing smoking). Drinking alcohol is ok for a man, not for a woman, it is
against our culture. The list goes on.

In no way should the yardstick to gauge women’s rights be
rights that men enjoy, although it’s a place they should reach before gaining
full liberalisation. Men curb their own rights in their own way, but that is a
different debate.